NYPD rejects request for its freedom of information handbook

I think you are entirely missing the point. You shouldn't have to. This isn't even a close case. It's not even a case.

Also, this one hasn't been taken to court yet, just appealed administratively, since you must exhaust all administrative remedies before you can bring a court action in most cases.

"It is quite possible that when they think about it, they will agree with you. "

Who is they?

So on general principle, the NYPD says "no" to everything, and forces you to appeal, and then forces you to take them to court.

This is not okay. In fact, it's not even close to okay. Governmental apparatus exists at the whim of the people, and when it places it's interests in opposition to ours, forcing us to jump through expensive, time-consuming hoops to extract even the smallest amount of compliance with the law, there is something deeply wrong with the organization at the highest levels. Evidence? The police chief should be yelling at someone about this, and making a public apology for what is clearly absurd and unsupportable stone-walling. The fact that he remains silent implies his complicity. (But then again, what do you expect from someone who condones and expands the appalling stop-and-frisk policy?)

>Would you be posting your concerns that the release of that document opens up the NYPD to lawsuits from it's own employees?

If I criticize their actions in this way, then I am suggesting that I know more about the situation then they do, which I do not. If I am defending their actions, all I am saying is that their is the possibility that their actions are reasonable, given what they know about the situation.

I absolutely do not trust the government, but most of my distrust comes from a concern of their competence, or individual employees acting in their own interest to my detriment (such as not admitting they made a mistake). I do have some concerns high level policies they might have, but those are relatively minor concerns.

To clarify this point, suppose this secrecy is deliberate policy. We need to change leadership to people who follow a policy of transparency, give time for changes to trickle down into the culture, then problem solved.

However, if the problem is bureaucratic, we need to change the incentive structure so that the individual making the decision to disclose a particular document has a personal reason to do so. A good first step to this would be specific protections for individuals if they release something that results in harm to their employers/clients/ETC. We also need to increase the cost of not disclosing documents, so that they have a reason to disclose them. For example, we could require the person making the decision could require an active objection from the concerned party in order to withhold the content. Of course, all of these suggestions are incredibly rough and require much more careful consideration before being implemented.

Having said that, I do see the appeal of thinking we are dealing with all powerful organizations, free from the bureaucratic nightmares that plague us mere mortals.

As a direct response to my concerns, you have actually addressed some these fundamental concerns that should have been dealt with in the original article article allowing me, as an untrained lay-person in this matter, to take this case much more seriously.

I am still not convinced that this is an instance of policy and not individual incentives, but answering that would involve reasearch into many cases, their incentive structure, comparrisons to other groups, ETC, and would need to be written up into a long and in depth article which would get fewer readers and less invigorate the base as these shorter and less logically compelling pieces. I realize that this is a fundemental problem with any type of activism, and the only solution I know of is to call it out and hope that A) someone will provide the information in comments, B) authors will tend to include (or reference) more information in the original article, and C) other people will that these articles may not show what they think they do.